by Tasha Black
Spenser
Stargazer Alien Mystery Brides #3
Tasha Black
13th Story Press
Copyright © 2020 by 13th Story Press
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
13th Story Press
PO Box 506
Swarthmore, PA 19081
[email protected]
Contents
Tasha Black Starter Library
About Spenser
Spenser
1. Natalie
2. Natalie
3. Spenser
4. Natalie
5. Natalie
6. Natalie
7. Spenser
8. Natalie
9. Spenser
10. Spenser
11. Natalie
12. Natalie
13. Spenser
14. Natalie
15. Spenser
16. Natalie
17. Natalie
18. Spenser
19. Natalie
20. Spenser
21. Natalie
22. Spenser
So You Think You Can Marry an Alien - SAMPLE
1. Margot
2. Kent
3. Margot
Intergalactic Dating Agency
Tasha Black Starter Library
About the Author
One Percent Club
Tasha Black Starter Library
Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!
Get your FREE books now at tashablack.com!
About Spenser
She’s hunting a murderer, but this gorgeous alien wants to capture her heart.
Natalie West loves her job serving the public as part of the Stargazer police force. But with Violet Locke’s detective agency interfering in her work, and a murder case on her hands that she’s barred from investigating, she’s starting to feel like an outsider in her own town. The sad truth is, she may need Locke’s help to solve the case. If only that didn’t also involve spending time with Spenser, the hunky alien who sends Natalie’s heart into a tailspin every time he’s near.
Spenser has watched both his brothers find mates since they arrived on Earth. But the big alien prefers solving puzzles to meddling with humans. Until he meets Natalie West. The beautiful officer is as courageous as she is disdainful of their small detective agency. Spenser is determined to prove she is wrong about him, and claim her as his mate.
When a murder investigation sends Natalie to Spenser’s side, the two are forced to work together to get to the truth. If they succeed, will Natalie want to go back to the way things were? Or will Spenser find a way to capture her heart as well as their suspect?
If you like strong women, hunky aliens, wild adventures, steamy sensual scenes, and happily-ever-afters, then you’ll love the world of Stargazer! The Stargazer Mystery Brides are an alien romance homage to the stories of Sherlock Holmes.
Stargazer Alien Mystery Brides:
- Hannibal
- Fletcher
- Spenser
Spenser
1
Natalie
In her dream, Natalie was stretched out on a fluffy towel. The warmth of the sun kissed her cheeks as the sounds and scents of gently crashing waves permeated her senses.
A gentle breeze skittered pleasantly across her skin.
She didn’t remember booking a trip to the beach, which was her first clue that she was dreaming, but now that she was there, it seemed like a great idea.
Suddenly, she was aware of a presence.
She looked up and saw a shadow spill across her body - a man’s shadow, all wide shoulders and narrow hips.
She shaded her eyes with her hand and turned to look up at the person who was interrupting her relaxation.
Her breath caught in her throat.
It was him.
Spenser.
The hunky alien was bare-chested, his muscular form glistening in the sun.
“Natalie,” he said, his deep voice playing on her senses.
She opened her mouth but couldn’t speak.
Spenser lowered his big body to hers, caging her in those huge arms. He gazed into her eyes as her body burned for him.
She swore she could see universes colliding behind those dark eyes.
When he closed them, she closed hers too, every nerve ending in her body focused on her lips, awaiting his kiss.
He pressed his mouth to hers and she felt it to her toes, the need pouring off him hotter than the overhead sun, stoking her own desperate desire.
A seagull cried somewhere nearby, and then another.
She tried to focus on Spenser’s mouth, and ignore the rhythmic calls.
But they only grew louder as the pressure of his body on hers began to fade away.
She tried to pull him closer, but he melted under her touch.
Natalie woke up at last, squinting into the early morning light with a handful of sheets, her alarm clock blaring beside her.
“Damn, Nat,” she muttered to herself, reaching over to slap the alarm clock off. “You seriously need to get out more.”
She staggered to the bathroom, suspecting that a hot shower, followed by a cup of coffee and some breakfast, would do a lot to ease her morning funk.
Filling her belly would be easy. Filling the emptiness left behind by her dream of romance might prove to be a little more difficult.
Natalie hadn’t exactly been active on the dating scene lately. She had spent so much time focused on her career, that she wasn’t sure she even remembered how to date.
“Who cares?” she muttered to herself. “Men are trouble anyway. You don’t need one.”
Which was true. She didn’t need one.
But she kind of wanted one.
Maybe she should get a dog instead. She’d been thinking about it. They were big and slobbery, just like men. She wasn’t sure how her landlord would feel about it, and having to pay a dog walker for when she was at work wasn’t cheap. But maybe it was worth it if a little companionship from a loyal pet would keep her out of trouble.
Or maybe she didn’t need that much help keeping her mind off men. After all, the man she was dreaming about wasn’t even technically a man at all.
He was an alien. Which had its own baggage. But the real issue was that he was the brother of the alien mated to that dreadful Violet Locke, who was always interfering in police business and generally making a nuisance of herself. That whole group over on Crescent Street was trouble, and the last thing she needed was to be head-over-heels in helpless lust with one of them.
“Nope, nope, nope,” she said to herself as she slipped under the steaming water.
But she suspected it might be too late for her.
She had talked with Spenser twice. Each time the air between them seemed to shimmer with the magnitude of their mutual lust.
She had walked away shaken both times, and hadn’t been able to think of much else for a long time afterwards.
“Focus,” she told herself. “Could be a big day today.”
Chief Baker was about to announce the new Community First task force.
Natalie loved the work she did with the kids in the community, both on duty and off. She knew she was young to head up her own task force, but it felt like a
great fit. And even if she didn’t get chosen to lead, the mere existence of the Community First program in the first place would be the culmination of a lot of lobbying on her part.
“A big day, no matter what,” she congratulated herself as she finished up her shower and headed back to her room to get dressed.
A few hours later, she was ensconced at her desk, a cup of coffee in one hand, and a phone in the other.
“What kind of cat is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know, just… a black one,” the lady on the other end said anxiously.
“A kitten? An older cat?” Natalie asked, jotting down notes.
“I guess kind of like a teenager,” the woman replied, sniffing. “I just got him at the shelter last week.”
“Like a young cat?” Natalie asked.
“Yes,” the woman said.
“Is he wearing a collar?” Natalie asked.
“No, I want him to be able to chase mice,” the woman said. “So I didn’t put anything noisy on him.”
Natalie managed to stifle her desire to give a lecture on why pets needed collars. The lady was clearly seeing the error of her ways.
“Is he micro-chipped?” she asked instead.
“Yes, he has a chip,” the lady replied.
“That’s great,” Natalie praised her. “It was really smart for you to do that. And I’ll bet when we find him, we can find a lightweight collar that won’t slow him down when he’s chasing mice, right?”
“Yes, officer, absolutely,” the woman promised.
“Don’t worry, we’re going to do all we can to track him down,” Natalie told her. “And I will reconnect with you by the end of the day one way or the other.”
“Th-thank you,” the woman sniffed.
“That’s my job,” Natalie told her.
They hung up, and Natalie headed to the break room to refill her coffee. It was going to take time to call all the local shelters. If that didn’t work out, she’d head over to Arbor Avenue and search on foot.
She thought bitterly about the time she’d wasted trying to find the last crop of lost pets, when it turned out her own mentor had rounded them up and taken them for training without telling anyone.
Harvey Smalls was a good mayor, whose heart was absolutely in the right place. And he was usually a great mentor, especially since Natalie didn’t have much support from her family. She had no siblings, and she wasn’t close with her parents, so she appreciated the guidance she got from Harvey all the more. And he was usually right on the money with his advice, both career and personal.
But she had to admit that his recent efforts to singlehandedly make Stargazer into some kind of model town had been a bit misguided, at best.
And Natalie wondered if fewer skateboarders and barking dogs would really make any impression at all on the big corporation that was coming to Stargazer to look at opening an executive campus in town.
She shook her head as she poured out another cup of joe.
“Busy morning?” Lance, one of the other officers asked.
She wasn’t really what you would call close with any of her coworkers, but Lance was probably the one she would be most likely to call a friend. He was kind, and seemed to like the job almost as much as she did.
“Lost cat at 108 Arbor Avenue,” she told him.
“What color?” he asked.
“Black,” she replied. “Young cat, male.”
“Hey,” Lance said. “Do you think that could have anything to do with the black cat those people found at 110 Arbor Avenue?”
“Do I think the lost cat at 108 has anything to do with a found cat at 110?” Natalie asked, laughing. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it does. What’s the name of the homeowner at 110 again?”
“Lemme check,” Lance said.
She followed him to his desk.
“It’s Nuñez,” he told her, reading his notes. “I’ll call them.”
“Nah, it’s my lunch break anyway,” Natalie said. “I’ll stop by on my way to Burger Planet.”
“Suit yourself,” Lance said.
A few minutes later, she drove down Arbor Avenue and parked in the shade of a scarlet-leafed tree. When she stepped up onto the porch of 110, she could hear the happy sounds of children squealing over something, presumably the neighbor’s cat.
She rang the bell.
A man opened the door, he was carrying a half of a peanut butter sandwich. A small toddler in a rainbow dress clung to his leg and looked up at Natalie with wide eyes.
In the background someone was chanting, “Cat! Cat! Cat!”
“Are you here about the cat?” the father asked hopefully.
“I’m here about the cat,” she confirmed.
“Thank God,” he said.
The chanting child appeared with the other half of the peanut butter sandwich. She looked nearly identical to her sister. This poor guy had more than he could handle.
A small cat trailed in the child’s wake, appearing to be more interested in the sandwich in her hand than in the girl.
“Who does it belong to?” he asked.
“Would you believe me if I told you it belongs to the lady next door?” she asked.
He threw his head back and laughed.
“She just got it last week,” Natalie said, smiling. “Do you want me to bring it over?”
“No, no, the girls and I will bring the cat back to its owner, right girls?” he asked hopefully.
The girls took the news with good cheer, but in fairness, they probably didn’t know what he was talking about.
Natalie headed back out to her car and watched as the dad carried the cat over to the house next door, toddlers in tow, and presented the missing feline to its very grateful owner.
He waved to Natalie on his way back home with the kids.
“Thank you so much, Officer West,” the cat’s owner called to her tearfully.
“My pleasure,” Natalie called to them. “You all have a great day.”
Moments like these were the best part of the job. Unlike some of her colleagues, Natalie hadn’t gotten into this line of work for over-the-top excitement of any kind. She loved her town and wanted to help.
She hopped back in the car and had almost made it to Burger Planet when her radio crackled to life.
“Hey Merle,” she said.
“They need you over at the mayor’s house,” Merle said in a worried voice, abandoning any attempt at police jargon and just sounding like a person in distress.
“What’s up?” Natalie asked.
“Just get there as soon as you can,” Merle said, clicking off.
2
Natalie
Natalie stood in the mayor’s study, a pleasant, shadowy room where she had spent countless quiet hours talking with her mentor about her dreams for the community.
Today, the brocade drapes had been thrown open to let in muted sunlight from the shaded patio on the other side of French doors.
It would have been pretty, except that the prone, lifeless body of Harvey Smalls lay on the floor behind his desk.
Natalie wrapped her arms around her shoulders and willed herself to breathe.
“This looks open and shut to me,” Chief Baker said. “He had a known allergy. There’s an open container of food on the desk. Looks like he just didn’t have his EpiPen handy.”
“He always had it handy,” Natalie said automatically.
“Well, maybe not handy enough,” the chief replied.
“Check the top desk drawer,” Natalie said, turning to look out the French doors and into the mayor’s idyllic backyard to try and center herself.
She could hear someone rummaging around in the desk behind her.
“Nothing in here, Chief,” Lance said.
“That can’t be right,” Natalie said. “He always kept one near him, always. He was incredibly careful about his allergy.”
She stepped over and looked in the drawer herself.
Lance was right. There were sticky notes, pen
s and pencils, and a few papers. But there was no EpiPen.
She sighed.
In the next room, she could hear a low, animal whine.
“Barker Posey,” she said, remembering the mayor’s beloved dog.
“We put her in her crate,” Lance said. “She was kind of freaking out.”
Of course she was. The poor thing was probably confused and terrified. Natalie was feeling a bit of both herself.
“I’ll take her home with me,” Natalie said. “Is that okay, Chief?”
“Sure,” Chief Baker replied. “It’s that or the shelter. He doesn’t have any family nearby that I know of.”
“Look, I’m going to deal with the dog for now,” Natalie said. “But please, promise me we’ll keep this case open. Harvey would never have eaten a bite of something without checking for nuts. And he definitely wouldn’t have been without an EpiPen. And the food right on the table, that feels too convenient to me. There’s something fishy about all of this.”
“Natalie,” the chief said. “Walk with me.”
She allowed him to take her arm and walk her down the hall to where the mayor’s dog shivered in her crate.
The enormous Saint Bernard looked almost small with fear. She gazed up at Natalie, her dark eyes filled with sadness.
I hear you, girl.
“Listen, I know how much the mayor meant to you,” the chief said kindly. “No one would blame you for having big feelings on this. But it’s clearly a terrible, tragic accident.”
